Chapter 5: Tasering a Killer

There were also seven mailboxes on the wall behind the front door. Six were numbered for the flats whilst the seventh was labelled Mr Aziz. Clearly, he used this address for something.

Tommy called back at the station to pick up a second man. He found Detective Constable Jack Allen at a loose end so took him along to have a further look at the house. When they arrived, they looked all around the outside. They could see some light wells at the side which would give daylight and air to the cellar but couldn’t see any form of access.

There was also what looked like a hatch over an old coal chute, but that was securely padlocked from the outside and clearly hadn’t been disturbed for years.

Going back to the front door, they soon got access to the house by buzzing one of the tenants. Examining the door to the cellar, they found that the only lock seemed to be a fairly new yale lock. They knocked on the door but got no reply.

Tommy was nothing if not resourceful. He went out to his car and returned with a re-chargeable electric drill, some high-speed bits and a screwdriver. It took him two minutes to drill out the lock barrel and open it with his screwdriver.

Pushing the door open, they found a flight of stairs going down. Switching the lights on, they went down to find the cellar was one big room with several pillars dotted round. There was a kitchen in one corner and a bathroom in the other.

A large double bed was in the middle of the room with a settee and armchair plus table and chairs dotted round. The floor was carpeted wall to wall. It looked as if the bed had been slept in recently. A quick search revealed some open letters addressed to Mr Aziz at this address.

Tommy had a new lock in his tool kit, so he took it apart and removed the tumblers so that it would open with any yale key. Fitting it in place of the lock he had drilled, meant that if Aziz returned, he could use his key to enter without realising that the lock had been tampered with.

One of the two ground floor flats was occupied by an elderly lady who had let them in when he buzzed at the front door. Tommy knocked on her door, introduced himself and asked if he could borrow her front door key for half an hour so he wouldn’t keep disturbing her.

In response to her request, he told her they had had reports about the cellar being used for illegal activities and they were examining it. She willingly obliged so Tommy sent DC Allen off in his car to a nearby locksmiths to get a copy key cut.

Tommy sat in the cellar in comfort until Jack returned with the new key. After testing it in the front door, they closed the cellar, returned the original key to the lady and told her they couldn’t find anything to indicate the report was true.

Having set her mind at rest and thanked her for her co-operation they returned to the station. Thanking DC Allen for his assistance, Tommy reported to DI Tim Wallace what he had done and found.

In Detective Superintendent Hopwood’s arsenal was an old Volvo estate with a local builder’s signs on the sides. It had a very special ladder rack built on the roof which housed four cameras pointing front, back, and each side. Via the internet they could all be viewed at the same time back at the station. Tommy arranged for it to be parked outside Aziz’s house of flats.

Anyone passing could see that the vehicle was empty, so it wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. Any one camera could be selected to record constantly, so instead of having to sit and watch, once an hour or so, someone would do a fast spin through the recording, pause when anyone was seen entering or leaving, check it wasn’t Aziz and carry on. Very efficient and labour saving.

The first night, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. The following day, another body was discovered, this time an eighteen-year-old girl. She was discovered at the side of a cart track up on a nearby hill. She had been violently raped and had her throat cut so severely that it had almost severed her head.

Once identified as Mandy Cross, her next of kin were informed. Her distraught parents gave the police the names and addresses of the friends whom she had been out with the night before. They all said the same, they had been drinking, they were all a bit tipsy, but Mandy was the worst. She had got so drunk that her friends had walked her home.

They hadn’t got a taxi as the pub they were at wasn’t very far away. By the time they got near her house, the walk had sobered her up a lot, so she assured them she would be fine the rest of the way. They saw her to the end of her road, then headed for home themselves.

The road where Mandy lived was adjacent to the road where Aziz’s house of flats was located. The pathologist reported that as Mandy was very slim and petite, and the rape had been ferocious, her insides had been badly torn and had bled considerably.

Apart from suffering from the rape, she would have been in great pain from the damage done to her insides. The perpetrator had not bothered to wear a condom, so there was a plentiful supply of sperm and therefore DNA available. A sample of which had been sent to the lab.

In the pathologist’s opinion, the attack matched the previous ones, although only the post-mortem and the DNA results would confirm that.

At eleven o’clock that night, Tommy got a call from the station to say that a male fitting the description of Aziz had been picked up on the camera entering the house as near as they could tell, about ten thirty. A check on the other cameras showed a black Volvo estate parked down the road, but it’s number plate couldn’t be seen.

Tommy reported to DI Tim Wallace who immediately arranged to meet him at the house. They both arrived within minutes of each other, parking in the adjoining road. Tommy had told the station to return the camera to recording the front door and to only check it every hour on the hour. At quarter past twelve, they approached the camera car from the rear and threw a black cloth over the camera pointing at the front door.

Tommy was Taser trained and had it ready on his belt. He quietly inserted the key in the front door to let them both in. They put the snip on then pushed the door to quietly behind them. Going up to the cellar door, Tommy just put the tip of the key in the hole and turned it very, very, slowly. When he felt the catch disengage, he pushed the door open an inch, then slowly released the key.

Tommy looked at Tim who nodded at him. With his taser in his hand, Tommy took a deep breath then pushed the door open and switched the light on. Running down the steps the moment the light came on, he could see that someone was lying in the bed. Pointing the Taser at him, Tommy called out, ‘Police, don’t move or I’ll fire.’

The body in the bed had woken as the light came on. By this point he had come to and was in the act of sitting up. Tommy recognised him from his photo. ‘Abdul Amal Aziz,’ he called out, ‘I am arresting you for the murder and rape of Denise Cullen, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

As he finished speaking, Aziz threw the duvet up in the air and rolled out on the far side of the bed. Tommy just managed to stop himself firing, so his Taser was still active. ‘Give yourself up Aziz,’ he called, ‘You really don’t want to experience the pain my Taser will give you. Lie back on the bed with your hands behind your back.’

As soon as he had finished speaking, he moved slowly around the bed, keeping back as much as he could. There had been no sign that Aziz was intending to co-operate, so he was on high alert. As he moved further round, he reached the middle of the foot of the bed. The next second, the bed erupted as Aziz heaved the side up into the air, not realising that Tommy had moved.

As the bed went upright, Tommy had a perfect target of Aziz on his feet, his hands high up in the air pushing the bed. Tommy didn’t hesitate, he fired. There was a choked scream as Aziz fell to the floor, his entire body twitching. The bed fell back on top of him. Tommy and Tim dived in, pulled the bed off him, sat on him, pulled his arms behind his back and handcuffed him.